


Things That We Could Be

by KagekaNecavi



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Secret Wars Civil War
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cap_Ironman Reverse Bang Challenge 2016, Explicit Language, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing, Teasing Selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 02:09:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7021597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KagekaNecavi/pseuds/KagekaNecavi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his spare time between releasing Extremis in San Francisco and building the Sol’s Hammer, Tony has managed to create an escape from the incursions in the form of a device that will pull people towards their alternate universe selves. The catch is it will only take two people, and only if they’re in physical proximity. Fortunately at the end of all things Steve comes to beat the shit out of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things That We Could Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ranoutofrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art for "Changes on our hands and on our faces" by laireshi and "Things That We Could Be" by KagekaNecavi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6927214) by [ranoutofrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/pseuds/ranoutofrun). 



> Thanks go out to [cloudyjenn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudyjenn), [humantrampoline](http://archiveofourown.org/users/HumanTrampoline), [missbecky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky), and [nightwalker](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwalker) for being there for me when I got writer's block or needed to bounce ideas off of people! Also thanks to the [mods for this event](http://c-im-bigbang.livejournal.com/) for being understanding when I needed an extension. You rock! Even more thanks go to the other writer for the amazing art that inspired this work, [laireshi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi)! You're a wonderfully supportive person, and I couldn't have finished this without your help and kind words. Laire's fic is [over here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/cap_ironman_2016_RBB/works/6924295), so go give it all the love! And last but certainly not least, thank you so much to [ranoutofrun](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/pseuds/ranoutofrun) for the fantastic art that inspired this work. The art is gorgeous [(you should all go look!)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/cap_ironman_2016_RBB/works/6927214) and you are wonderful!
> 
> Title comes from the song [Counting Stars by One Republic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yim4--J44gk). It seemed to fit very well, both the bit of lyrics and the song in general.
> 
> See end notes for lots of things including further content warnings.
> 
> Edit 5/30: I knew I would forget something, lol. I realize that since this fic is 17k of multiple Tony Starks and Steve Rogers and it changes POV there might be a bit of confusion occasionally as to what is going on so I kept to a few basic rules:  
> \- The only points of view we ever see from are 616!Tony and 616!Steve. Hopefully this is either apparent or clears things up once you know this.  
> \- Tony starts off referring to both Steves as "Steve", but then changes to just calling Secret Wars Civil War (SWCW) Steve "Steve" and 616!Steve "Rogers".  
> \- Steve starts off calling both Tonys "Stark" and then changes to call SWCW!Tony "Tony" and keeps calling 616!Tony "Stark".  
> \- And as always in my fic, point of view changes are hard and solid, and delineated by a line break. If you notice any POV changes that aren't marked that way, it's because I screwed up somewhere.
> 
> I hope that clears things up for anyone who might be confused!

Tony had actually been hoping that at the end someone would come for him. He’d almost stopped caring who, just as long as it was someone.

Well, that wasn’t quite true.

He had known it would be Steve or Rhodey. They considered him a loose end and going to their deaths, to the destruction of the universe, with a gigantic loose end just dangling there would annoy the fuck out of them. Maybe Pepper, though after she’d failed to replace him with the AI version of himself she had washed her hands of him, not even giving enough of a shit to come kill him at the end of the world.

Those were the people he wanted it to be anyway, so when his systems informed him that multiple War Machine drones were converging on their location, he spared a moment to be smugly satisfied that he was right, that they’d come for him. He would have put it at 70-30 for it being Steve over Rhodey, though - Steve was the one who clung to grudges like a drowning man clung to a life preserver. It made way more sense for him to want to come try to kill Tony than for Rhodey to do it.

Tony armored up and turned, making some quip about how long he and Rhodey had known each other, and it was Steve standing there, in that garish red white and blue armor Tony made for him so long ago. What the fuck had ever possessed him to paint it like that, anyway? No, that was a stupid question - they were Steve’s colors and even when they hadn’t been together, Tony’d had a crush that could be seen from space. Honestly Tony was surprised he’d never gotten a shield tattoo or something equally ridiculous.

Not for the first time, Tony was glad that no one could see his face when he was in the armor, because Steve couldn’t see the smirk he couldn’t keep off his face. He’d need to let Steve beat the shit out of him for a little while to sell this but, hey, they both needed to blow off some steam.

Even as he’d been finishing Sol’s Hammer, even as Reed and the others had been finishing the Life Raft, he’d also tinkered with something smaller than the Life Raft but much more durable. It was only designed to take two people and worked by proximity. They needed to be very close to each other when it was activated and it would take them to alternate versions of themselves. Which was where the durability came in - until the device was able to locate and drop them with alternates they would be suspended, floating in a bubble of their own reality in the microcosmic infinity between the multiverse.

There was something a little fucked up about the fact that Tony was using his get out of jail free card on the man that came to his home while the world burned around them to try to kill him. There was something _really_  fucked up about the fact that Tony was stupidly glad that Steve was the one who had showed up. Because Tony was the monster that they’d all accused him of turning into, that he’d always been terrified of turning into, and he only cared about saving the two of them.

Something in the back of his mind said that once upon a time, Tony might have tried to make his alternate reality bubble large enough for more than two, or that he may have given it to Steve and told him to take it and save someone else. Not that Rogers would have trusted him, but that’d be Steve’s problem, not his.

But no, Tony was done trying to save people.

This didn’t count. This was purely selfish - waiting somewhere obvious and unshielded for one of his friends to come try to kill him so he could rip them out of their reality and try to find some universe that was going to survive this Armageddon. It was simply making sure that he wouldn’t be the only survivor from their universe, since Tony didn’t think the Life Raft would make it anyway.

Steve began to rip the armor off, screaming at Tony to say that he’d lied the whole time, to everyone, and when Tony did so Steve decked him, using the full weight of the armor in his punch. If not for Extremis and his own armor supporting his neck, Tony was certain his neck would have snapped. There was at least one tooth loose in his mouth, dislodged by Steve’s fist, and Tony looked back up at Steve, about ready to tell him that he would have done everything the same if he had the chance again. Then he saw the Helicarrier bearing down on them.

Time to put the brilliant plan into action.

He powered up one of his gauntlets and hit Steve in the head with it, just a glancing blow to knock Steve back. Tony spat the loose teeth and some blood out onto the ground and sat up, crawling over to Steve and making sure they were touching, armor to armor.

“What the hell are you doing, Stark?” Steve growled, glaring at him.

“Not telling,” Tony grinned, blood dripping ghoulishly from his mouth. It only took a thought to activate the alternate reality bubble, instantly suspending them in time and space and dimensions, and not a moment too soon as the Helicarrier crashed down where they’d been. Everything went white, and the last thing Tony thought was that he hoped he wasn’t doing this just for Steve to kill him when they landed where they were going.

 

* * *

 

Steve came to slowly, vaguely aware of the soft beep of a heart monitor, a pinch in one arm where what felt like an IV was feeding into it, and surprisingly soft sheets underneath his hands. The smell supported the idea that he was in a hospital room, though he could also smell expensive cologne. Familiar cologne that he couldn’t quite place. He was cold, but that was no surprise. Being physically old made him feel cold all the time, like someone had just sucked all the heat out of him. Ever since it had happened the number of nightmares about the ice he’d had skyrocketed. This cold seemed normal, especially considering the relatively light blanket he was covered with. He could hear someone else breathing, and it only sounded like one person. That was about all he could figure out with his eyes closed, and just before he opened them, he realized why the cologne was so familiar.

It was Stark’s.

His eyes snapped open and he sat up, ready to spring into action, but the way Stark looked startled him into stillness. Stark looked older. Tired. His hair was white, but his beard and eyebrows were mostly black, which made Steve think he’d grayed very early. But it still could have been years.

“How long?” Steve asked, and his voice cracked, dry and unused.

“I knew I recognized you, despite the age on you,” Stark said, standing and going over to a small table that was sitting near the bed Steve was in. There was a glass there and a pitcher of ice water and Stark poured a glass and held it out to him. “I ran a scan on you when you arrived - you’re not from our universe. So, no, you didn’t freeze for another few decades. We just found you yesterday.”

Steve pushed himself up a little and reached out to take the water. That was a relief. As was the idea that this wasn’t his Stark. Not that Stark was _his_. Just from his universe. He took several sips of water and then looked up at Stark, studying his face. “You don’t seem particularly surprised. Do you get visitors from other universes often?”

“Not as such. But we’ve had enough odd things happen here that a random Steve Rogers dropping in isn’t that unusual,” Stark shrugged, the movement elegant. “Do you know how you got here?”

The question caused Steve some pause. He wasn’t sure how honest he wanted to be. But he could be somewhat honest without being entirely dishonest, either. “I have an idea, but I’m not entirely certain. I think someone else did it, but we were also in the middle of what we called an incursion, so it could have been that.”

“What’s an incursion?” Stark asked. Even though Steve was furious at his universe’s version of Stark, hadn’t seen him for months except for once or twice including at the end of the world, he could still read the expression on Stark’s face plain as day - curiosity and worry. If he knew the way Stark thought, and he wasn’t so sure he did anymore, Stark was probably concerned that this universe might need to protect itself from incursions. Though based on what Reed and the others had been saying, this world should have already had incursions and it should have already gone through the hell that Steve’s universe did.

Unless of course Stark was lying. Steve didn’t think he was, but then again, he hadn’t thought his universe’s Stark had been lying for the months or years that he’d been lying to Steve. So it was entirely possible that he had no fucking idea how to read Tony Stark anymore. But if he did know about the incursions then telling him about them wouldn’t hurt or help.

“They’re … complicated,” Steve said, pausing to order his thoughts. “The multiverse was collapsing. Earths were colliding with each other, causing each Earth’s universe to be destroyed. There were very few ways to stop it.”

Stark’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. We’ve never had that happen here, not that I know of. I’d assume I would know if it did happen, at least.”

“They were only visible at the incursion point, until the destruction of the world was pretty much inevitable. But, yeah, I’d assume _you’d_  know about it,” Steve said, his tone in the last half of the sentence more accusing than he’d meant it to be.

“Right, well there’s a lot of shit to unpack there,” Stark said, eyebrows arched. He went on, though, “If the incursions are only visible where the Earths are touching until the destruction starts, then I’d probably only know about it if it happened on the Iron, or one of our allied nations.”

“The Iron?” Steve asked, getting a sinking feeling about that.

“Yes. After the war over Registration the country split into the Iron and the Blue. General Rogers rules over the Blue and I’m the president of the Iron,” Stark explained and asked after a slight pause, “I take it that’s not the way things went for your world?”

“No. God, no. I never would have let it get so far,” Steve said, feeling horror curl in his gut. They’d ripped the country apart with their war? Why in the hell had they let it get to that point?

Stark leaned back and gave him a look, eyes narrow. “But you did fight over the SHRA in your world? It sounds like you did.”

“I’m not discussing that with you. Not after you and your - did you call him _General_  Rogers? - your Steve ripped your country in half,” Steve snapped, shaking his head.

“Really?” Stark asked and he had the gall to look shocked. But what he said next gave Steve pause, “So you don’t think that we could benefit from knowing how you stopped the war?”

Steve sighed and said after a moment, “Fine. We were at the Negative Zone Prison and had released the heroes being held there. Cloak teleported everyone out and we ended up fighting in the streets of New York, just outside the Baxter Building. We just about destroyed the city fighting and I …” Steve hesitated for a long moment. Stark looked somewhat horrified, and it was hard to talk about that fight while Stark was looking at him like that. What was different and what was the same between their two worlds? Had this fight gone the same except for the end? Did Stark remember being beaten half to death by Steve, if it had happened that way for them? “The Tony Stark of my universe and I ended up fighting each other. I got the advantage with Vision’s help but when Stark was down about a half a dozen civilian responders pulled me away from him and I realized that we weren’t really fighting about the issue. We were just fighting to be fighting. I surrendered.”

“Good God,” Stark said, looking pale. “Fuck. General Rogers had T’Challa blow up Project 42. The Negative Zone Prison. Things just kept getting worse after that. Osborne blew up the White House, the country divided. The war has been going on ever since with things - horrible things - happening at the worst moments to keep it going.”

“He wouldn’t,” Steve said, chest feeling tight, barely able to breathe. It sounded like the war had gone mostly the same until that point, if they’d both had fights that started at the Negative Zone Prison. So he and the other Steve, their General Rogers, must be relatively similar people. “I would never order anyone to do something like that, so I can’t believe your Steve would do it.”

“With her dying breaths, Maria Hill told me that T’Challa had activated the self destruct of the prison and locked them out on Rogers’ orders,” Stark snapped, standing and going over to the window, looking out of it, “So unless she had reason to lie to me before being blown up, I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“One of them had to have been lying,” Steve insisted, shaking his head.

“Either that or you don’t understand him nearly as well as you think you do,” Stark said, practically a snarl, “He might not be like you.”

The anger in Stark’s words was familiar, a reflection of the anger, the absolute fury, that Steve had felt for the Stark of his universe the past several months, ever since he’d remembered what Stark and the Illuminati had done to him. Except this Stark’s anger seemed old. Like, unless it was brought to the surface, it was dormant and festering.

“How long has it been since then?” Steve asked, frowning, “Since the fight at the Negative Zone Prison and the country got divided?”

“What the hell does that have to do with it?” Stark asked, then shook his head and said, irritated, “Six years. It’s been six years since the start of the war.”

“It hasn’t been nearly that long for us. No wonder you look like hell,” Steve said, “Dealing with that for six years is going to run anyone ragged.”

“You’re one to talk, grandpa. What the fuck happened to you?” Stark asked, and Steve laughed a little. Stark being Stark was a good way to break the tension.

“A villain named Iron Nail drained the serum from me completely. My world’s Tony and Bruce tested it, but as far as they could tell it’s gone for good,” Steve said, shrugging. “I still feel some strength sometimes, but they seem to be right.”

“I’m not so sure about that. We ran blood tests on you when you first got here and there seemed to be some remnant of the serum in you then,” Stark said, shaking his head.

“You took my blood?” Steve asked, outraged.

“Yeah. We wanted to test to see if you were who you looked like you were - I told you when you woke up that we ran scans. That was part of them. I also wanted to blood type you, make sure if we needed to give you any blood or fluids or anything we didn’t give you the wrong stuff. And I found some serum in you,” Stark said, “Now it could have been my mistake, but I want to run a few more tests. One thing about constant war is our tech is a lot more advanced than your world’s tech probably would have been at this point. If you do still have some fraction of the serum, I’ll probably be able to find it where they couldn’t.”

“Fine,” Steve snapped, “You run your tests. When you don’t get any results don’t come crying to me.”

“And when I get you all young and beautiful again, I’ll expect your tearful apology,” Stark said, and it took Steve a moment to place the tone as teasing. Had it been that long since he’d been on the receiving end of Stark’s teasing flirting that he had such a hard time recognizing the tone, even in such obvious words?

“We’ll see about that.” Steve said, trying for grumpy, but whatever tone he landed on just made Stark laugh.

 

* * *

 

Tony came awake with a start, gasping and jerking a little. He looked around wildly, taking in his surroundings quickly. The connection to Extremis was still there, he could still feel it inside him, but he couldn’t feel anything else. He was inside of a glass walled jail cell, large enough to comfortably include several beds, though it didn’t. Whoever had shoved him inside had done so without much thought to his comfort - he’d been laying on his side, one of his hands had been pinned under his hip and was now tingling with numbness. He shifted a little to make himself more comfortable, sitting up and resting his arms on his knees, and considered the room around him. It was definitely some sort of holding facility, though it was dark at the moment. The armor sat on a table nearby, looking split open, like Tony had been pried out of it. Even the symbiotic connection to the armor was gone. None of the ways he typically he had access to it were working.

Things looked and seemed slightly more advanced than he was used to, so either this universe was in a faster track or he was a little bit in the future. Which honestly wouldn’t surprise him. It may have taken a while for them to get to their alternate universe selves. Where was Rogers, though? Had he made it? Had he ended up in a different universe than Tony had? Either way, they had presumably both survived the destruction of their own universe, so he ought to be safe, wherever he was.

The lights came up and Tony blinked, shading his eyes with his hand. Tony couldn’t get a good look at the door from where he sat, so he didn’t bother getting up. If they were there for him, then he didn’t really give a shit what they were there for.

It was oddly unsurprising when two men who were clearly this universe’s version of Steve Rogers and Peter Parker walked into his line of sight and stopped there, glaring at him. Steve looked young, and just the same as his Steve always had. Peter, though. He looked older than Tony had ever seen him. Not incredibly old, it was just that Peter was at the age where a few years here or there made a lot of difference in the maturity of his appearance. His jaw and cheekbones were a little more defined and the little bit of baby fat that he’d had when he was a teenager - not that there’d ever been much to start with - was all gone. This universe was clearly further along than Tony’s own.

“Why the hell is your armor a symbiote?” Peter asked, voice a growl. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Well hello to you, too, Petey,” Tony said, smiling a little and leaning back against the wall, trying to look as casual as he could. He knew he didn’t look great - before he’d activated the bubble, his own Steve had ripped the majority of Tony’s armor off of him and much of Tony’s clothes had been shredded in the fight, too. And that was aside from the injuries that Extremis was well on its way to healing. He knew he still looked beat half to hell though.

“Don’t call me that,” Peter said, voice going tight.

Tony laughed a bit and just watched them as Steve got closer to the wall of the cell. He looked stressed. Not older, just like he was stressed all the time, and it was wearing on him. “Where are you from?” Steve asked, his voice quiet and yet so much more commanding than Peter could ever manage.

“An alternate dimension. And apparently one that’s a little bit behind yours. I’d say … three, four years? Based on how Pete looks,” Tony said, nodding to Peter.

“Right. And the armor?” Steve’s eyes narrowed a little, calculating.

Tony shrugged. “Because why the fuck not.”

“That’s not an answer. Tony Stark thinks ten moves ahead. You never just do anything for the hell of it. Tell us or we’ll make you,” Peter snapped. Tony gave him a little smile and shrugged again, and Peter let out an irritated sounding growl. He was just way too easy to rile up.

“Tony, the armor?” Steve said, arching his eyebrows. “Give us a straight answer.”

“I really don’t think so. After all, you’re in a position of power here. If I answer you now, then I don’t have anything to bargain with later on when you try to torture it out of me or whatever,” Tony said, shrugging. Peter looked offended by that suggestion, but he didn’t contradict it.

“Are you going to force us to get to that point?” Steve asked.

“So you admit that that’s a point we might get to?” Tony tilted his head a little bit, feigning curiosity. He was completely unsurprised that this Steve was willing to go to those lengths. Steve had always been far more dangerous when he was really pushed to his limits than anyone was comfortable admitting. That was what happened when you thought that you were always right, no matter who disagreed with you and no matter how much you had to fight even the people you loved because of it.

“If you force us into that. All we want to know is why the armor is a symbiote, Tony. It’s an easy answer,” Steve said, a slightly pleading note in his voice. Tony narrowed his eyes a little - the pleading note seemed fake to him.

“One ‘easy answer.’ And then after I give you that there’s going to be another and another. And the only thing you’re offering in return is ‘we won’t torture you.’ Well, knowing you it’s probably more like, ‘we won’t toss you to someone else and let them torture you.’ Steve Rogers isn’t the type to get his hands dirty. He knows people who do that for him,” Tony said, lips curling in something that was half grin, half snarl.

Steve crossed his arms and watched Tony a moment, then asked, “So does that mean there’s something we can offer you that will make you tell us? Something more enticing than that?”

Tony gave Steve a sly, seductive smile and said, trying to test how far he could push this, “Positive reinforcement is always more effective than negative reinforcement. And I’m sure that you’ve got some things that are very, very positively reinforcing.”

Peter’s eyes widened after a moment and his face went red, but Steve just watched Tony, the slightly harder tone of his voice the only indication that he’d understood the innuendo, “That’s not a bargaining chip, Tony. Think of something else.”

“How about you show me yours and I’ll show you mine?” Tony asked, his grin widening. Steve opened his mouth, a stern look on his face, and Tony quickly reassured, “I don’t mean it like that - though if that does ever get put back on the table, let me know. No, I mean you tell me what happened in this world and I tell you why my armor is like it is.”

There was a long pause as Steve watched him, considering. Tony could see him turning the options over in his mind, thinking about it from all angles.

“Yeah. Sure,” Steve nodded. “We went to war with each other. We fought over if superheroes should be required to register or not and it ended up tearing the country apart after our Tony activated the negative zone prison’s self destruct.”

Tony scowled. That wasn’t something he felt like he would do and he knew he was an asshole right now. “No. There’s no way he’d do that.”

“Except he did,” Steve said, shaking his head and giving Tony a look like he thought he was naive. It was an exceedingly patronizing and annoying look.

“Yeah, no. In my world - and I don’t actually remember doing this, but apparently I did it - Norman Osborne came after the list of heroes and I erased my memory to keep him from getting it. It was all backed up in my brain, thanks to Extremis, and I deleted a year of my life to keep him from it. So if he’s anything like me, no, I don’t think he’d blow them up,” Tony snapped.

“Did you not go to war, then?” Steve looked curious now. Tony thought he knew why, too - if Tony’s world hadn’t gone to war, then he knew how best to make this world’s Tony resolve things peacefully. To bad Tony had to burst his fucking bubble.

“Oh no. We went to war. And we did have that same battle, at the Negative Zone Prison. But nobody tried to blow the fucking place up. We just all ended up getting teleported to New York, thanks to Cloak. And we took the fight to New York, right there in the streets,” Tony said, and then paused a moment, considering. Would it be worth it to tell this Steve that Tony’s Steve had nearly beat him to death? No, probably not. There wasn’t anything he could get out of it right now. So instead he said, “Of course I don’t remember any of this personally, but I’ve heard what happened from other heroes, read about it. Once we destroyed a large portion of the city Steve realized that we were just fighting. We weren’t fighting _for_  anything anymore. We were just fighting. So Steve surrendered. Gave himself up to stop the fighting.”

Steve watched him for a long moment, a frown on his face and a little wrinkle of thought on his forehead. “Did that actually work?”

“Well, it depends on your definition of working. The fighting pretty much stopped right off. It didn’t unify people that much - there was still a large number of heroes that refused to register, and they still did what they wanted while unregistered. Then our Steve was … well, because our lives are fucked up, it was more complicated than this, but he was shot and essentially killed on the courthouse steps.”

“So, no, it didn't work,” Steve said dryly. Tony could see a tightness to his eyes and his fists were clenched - he was upset about that, even if he was trying not to be.

“Well, what about here? There's got to be a reason it ended up like this,” at the look Steve gave him, he added, “Aside from the way the thing with the prison ended.”

“We have tried reaching a peaceful solution. But every time we do something happens. Just a few days ago we met and tried to work it out and Miriam Sharpe was killed. Sniped, actually. The only person with the skill to make that shot is on his side,” Steve glared at the wall, clearly frustrated. Tony wondered if the direction he was glaring at was towards where the other Tony was. Cut off from Extremis like he was, he couldn’t even tell what direction he was facing, but it seemed like a Steve thing to do, glare disapprovingly in someone’s direction from a hundred miles away or more.

“Every time, something screws up your plans for peace? How often has this happened?” Tony asked, frowning. Something sounded fishy there.

“I don’t know. A half dozen, maybe. Why?” Steve looked over at him, though he still had the disapproving look on his face.

“Because it sounds like someone is fucking you over. If you and your world’s Tony Stark have been willing to try to make peace that often over the last few years and it never works out because random bullshit happens, then someone is fucking with you. And if it were your Tony then why would he bother even putting together the pretense of trying for peace?” Tony asked, shaking his head. “If he really wanted to fuck you over, he could easily do it. No, I think you’ve got a third party at work here. I just don’t know enough about your world to know who.”

Steve narrowed his eyes and considered him for a moment, then shrugged. “You may be right. But I’m not sure who it would be, either.”

“Okay, well, what’s your next move, here?” Tony shifted, sat with his legs crossed and leaning forward a little, trying to logic this out. If he could help this Steve solve his problems, then … well he wasn’t sure what would come next, but having _a_  Steve in his debt would be very helpful. Especially if his own Steve still harbored any sort of murderous intent towards him.

“Well …” Steve began to pace a little and rubbed the back of his neck, obviously avoided Tony’s gaze for several long minutes. Eventually he looked back at him and said, sighing. “There’s a project called Bellcurve. It’s … secondarily concussive but the primary function is to remove naturally occurring superhuman abilities from anyone in the effective zone.”

Tony gave Steve a blank look for a long moment before bursting out into laughter. Oh this was rich. The motherfucking hypocrite! So maybe they weren’t the exact same person, but the two Steves were close enough to count it as hypocrisy. This was great. He definitely had to make sure that they met and that this Steve explained Bellcurve to his own Steve.

“What the hell is so funny?” Steve snapped, face red. Tony couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or anger or both, but either way he looked pissed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You built a _bomb_  that removes people’s powers. You? Mr. Self Righteous Stick Up Your Ass?” Tony wiped his eyes, still laughing a little.

“Developing a weapon is a very different thing from deploying it,” Steve said, defensively, and Tony burst out laughing again. Steve glared and raised his voice, “I could just let the Punishers have a go at you, see how funny you think this is then.” Steve clearly had stopped learning how to take a joke at some point.

“I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it. Jesus fucking Christ, Steve,” Tony said, rolling his eyes. “See, the reason I’m here is because of these things called Incursions. Two Earths slamming together. They both get destroyed, both of their universes get destroyed. But if one Earth was gone or out of the way or got destroyed, then both universes lived. Even if it meant the destruction of one of the Earths. There were ways to save both universes without destroying one or the other Earth - like the Infinity Gauntlet, but the Gauntlet broke when our Steve used it. So we started talking about alternatives,” as Tony explained Steve inhaled sharply, knowing where this was going or thinking he knew where this was going, “options to keep in our back pockets but that we never intended to use. Our Steve didn’t like that, though. He said that he knew exactly how we’d think. We’d build something, a doomsday machine, and eventually we would stop talking about if we should build it to under what circumstances is it acceptable to use it. And then we’d convince ourselves that we were doing it for the right reasons, and we’d use it.”

“What happened?” Steve asked quietly. He sounded almost like he didn’t really want to know the answer.

“I built bombs. And when it came time, I refused to even try to pull the trigger. None of us could do it, except Namor. And then he ended up joining up with Thanos and a few others to form what he called the Cabal. They destroyed the Earths that were going to impact us. They kept us safe all the way until the end,” Tony said, “And then the final Earth, other than ours, hit us and we all died. Well. Not all of us, obviously.”

“So if your two Earths were the last ones, then what is this?” Steve asked after a moment, his tone challenging.

“I have no fucking clue. I built something to let myself and one other person in close physical proximity leave. It was designed to take us to any alternate selves that it could find, and if it couldn’t find alternates to keep us in stasis indefinitely. Even though the thing with the bombs and the other worlds had been more than just me - there’d been a whole group of us - Steve was mostly furious at me and had been for months. When it came down to the end of the world he decided where he wanted to be was fighting me. Trying to kill me. So I activated my gadget and the next thing I knew I was waking up in your cell,” Tony gestured around them.

“That doesn’t explain your suit. Why is it a symbiote?” Steve asked, coming to stand in front of the cell, crossing his arms and looking down at Tony.

Well then. Tony could give him the whole truth or the partial truth. He had a feeling that Steve would know if he lied completely, and it would be a lot of fun to see what this Steve might do with a little bit more information. He already didn’t seem too disturbed by the fact that Tony’s Steve had tried to kill Tony. That’s probably what perpetual war for years on end did to a person. “I already told you my Steve and I weren’t exactly getting along. Well, I needed to redesign the suit and the idea to put Extremis back into it seemed pretty viable. But of course I’m just a soft, squishy human underneath my tech. I needed a way to make it so that I couldn’t be separated from my suit. So I integrated it with a symbiote. Now it and I are biologically bonded.”

“That sounds just like a Tony thing to do, too,” Steve said with a small chuckle.

“Hey, it came in handy! I already managed to trick someone with it once in my own world. It’s not my fault you’ve got the symbiote expert on your side here,” Tony said, grinning a little.

Steve shook his head a little, walking over to where the suit lay on the table and staring at. After a long moment he turned back to Tony and asked, “You said this contains Extremis?”

“Yeah. Why?” Tony hadn’t expected that question. This was interesting. He kinda liked it when things happened he didn’t expect. It meant other people were being smart.

“Can you make it look like any suit? If we show you what this world’s Tony Stark’s suit looks like, can you make the outside look like that?” Steve asked, and Tony grinned wide.

“I like the way you think, Cap.”

 

* * *

 

“I have noticed some days when I feel more energetic,” Steve said, sitting on the edge of a hospital bed and watching Stark - no, this one deserved to be called Tony - watching   **Tony** flit about a lab of some kind, running tests on the control samples he’d taken a little bit earlier.

“You and I both know that there's a difference between the serum and ‘more energetic.’ Aren't there ever days where you almost feel like yourself again?” Tony asked, watching him curiously.

Steve thought a moment, and almost said no. Then he compared the days he hunched over and used a cane top the days he stood straight and was Commander Rogers. “Not quite. But comparatively, yes.”

“So what's different about those days?” Tony prompted, picking up some kind of tablet and stylus to take notes with.

Steve shrugged. “I command SHIELD and the Avengers on those days.”

Tony tapped at the tablet and then paused. “I wonder … could it be that simple?” He put the tablet down and grabbed Steve's hands with both of his, tugging on them. There was a wild gleam in his eyes, all frantic excitement. It was a look he hadn't seen on his own Tony in far too long. It was a good look on any Tony Stark, and on this one it made him look young, despite the hair. “Spar with me, old man.”

“What?” Steve let out a bark of surprised laughter, but let Tony tug him away. On their way out of the room, Tony grabbed a sample collecting kit, but didn’t even break stride as he did it. “You'd really beat up a hundred-year-old man?”

“If I'm right, I'm gonna get my ass handed to me by a hundred-year-old man. Which is part for the course when sparring with Steve Rogers,” Tony laughed, “Besides, I'm not exactly a spring chicken myself anymore.”

“You're not that old. The gray makes you look distinguished,” Steve protested immediately, then felt himself flushing a little.

“Am I being hit on?” Tony flat out stopped, staring at Steve. “You are! You're hitting on me. You know what, there's something else we can do that'll get you as hot and sweaty as I need.”

“Shut up, Tony,” Steve looked away, frowning. “Besides, if I tried that in this body I'd probably give myself a heart attack and keel over.”

“Not if I'm right about the serum,” Tony said, grinning again, and started to tug Steve away again, presumably towards the gym. “Where’d that flirting come from, anyway? I always thought you were straight. Well. Maybe my Steve is and you aren't.”

“That’s right, your world diverged in the middle of the war. My Tony and I tried dating a while back. Not that long after the war, actually. Almost immediately after everything we ended up getting sent to Vanaheim and when we got back after that, Tony and I knew that during and after the war we had both come closer to losing each other than any almost other time considering I basically did die and he wiped his mind to keep the registration list from Osborne. And not long before the war he'd stopped his heart and was dead for thirty seven minutes when Yinsen’s son set the armors loose. He basically killed himself because one of his armors was hurting me,” Steve said. He’d been so terrified when he saw Tony fall and when he couldn’t get Tony to respond afterwards.

“That happened here. I remember that,” Tony said quietly.

Steve nodded. It seemed like almost everything up to the war was the same here. “Anyway, afterwards we just wanted to make sure we didn't lose each other again. I knew that the feelings I had for him weren't strictly platonic, and apparently he felt the same way. And since we're both bisexual, we decided to give it a go,” Steve frowned. “It didn't work though.”

“What did he do?” Tony asked.

That made Steve laugh, and he shook his head. “Tony Starks everywhere. You always blame yourself. No, it was actually me. He wanted more commitment. I didn't. No, that's not true - I did, actually, but I was scared of it. So eventually I told him it wasn't working and we should see other people.” Steve shrugged a little.

“You actually used that line on him? The ‘see other people’ thing?” Tony’s eyebrows arched and he led them into the gym. It looked clean and tidy, but was clearly well used, most of the equipment showing at least some wear on it.

“Not quite like that, no. I made sure he knew that I still consider him one of my best friends, and that no longer dating him won’t change that,” Steve said, following Tony over to the locker room.

Tony handed him a change of clothes, something loose and comfortable, and then they went over to the sparring mats. “I’m still surprised that you and your Tony dated - I can’t imagine General Rogers ever doing that here - but if I’m all for taking you up on that flirting if you want.”

“If you can manage to make it so that I’m not scared I’ll break a hip, I’ll consider it,” Steve said, shooting him a grin. Tony laughed and gestured, and they began to spar. In the lab before Steve had felt tense and achy. It had felt like every joint ached. Now, though, he was starting to feel a little bit back to normal. He was moving much more easily and he actually felt stronger. Before long he pinned Tony to the mat and while he was breathing a little hard, he was having an easier time than Tony was.

Tony grinned and pushed himself up on his elbows a little. “Told you so,” he said, tone triumphant, “I’m pretty sure whatever remnants of the serum are in your blood are activated by adrenaline. Let me take some samples again so I can be sure, then we can work on keeping it active.”

Steve got off of Tony and let him take his samples. He had to admit that it did seem pretty compelling. Adrenaline alone could make someone stronger or make them move faster or not feel as tired, but this seemed to be something more. So maybe Tony was right.

Once the samples were taken, Tony led the way back to the lab and immediately started work. Steve wasn’t exactly sure what to do with himself, so he just hung around. Eventually he went and got something to eat, bringing back food and coffee for Tony, who continued working but managed to remember to thank Steve between bites of food.

When night came, Steve wasn’t able to pry Tony away from his work but he was shown to a place to sleep nearby. He wasn’t entirely certain if the person who showed him to the room recognized him as a Steve Rogers or not - Steve didn’t recognize the young woman, who was dressed like she worked in one of the labs that were around the one that Tony was in, but considering the other faction in their war was led by General Rogers, Steve figured she would be able to recognize him easily enough if he were younger looking.

It was nearly dinner the next evening before Tony figured it out. Steve was hanging around the lab, with nowhere else to go, and so he was right there when Tony needed him.

“Okay, so I’ve tested this on tissue samples from you that are serum neutral and I’m pretty sure it will work,” Tony said, having Steve sit down on a bed and take his shirt off.

“Pretty sure?” Steve asked, frowning.

“It’s really all I’ve got - I can’t exactly test it on a mouse or something because I don’t have any that come pre loaded with neutralized super soldier serum,” Tony pointed out.

“Okay, fine. But if I come out of this with two heads or something, I’m gonna be really ticked off.”

Tony let out a little laugh and nodded. “Understood.”

He strapped Steve’s arms and legs down, which was not reassuring at all, and carefully swabbed the inside of his elbow. “This is probably going to feel like a rush. It’s a combination of artificial adrenaline and serum distilled from the blood samples I took yesterday after we sparred,” Tony said quietly as he worked, his hands gentle. He injected it into Steve’s arm and when he pulled the needle back he put a bit of gauze and medical tape over the spot.

For several long minutes nothing happened. Then Steve felt it. Just like Tony said, it felt like a rush, like he was heading into the most intense battle he’d ever been in. He writhed against the straps and gasped, his heart feeling like it was beating out of his chest. It lasted for what felt like ages, and when his heart rate finally went down and he was breathing normally again, Steve saw that he’d twisted the straps on the bed almost completely off as he’d writhed.

Tony stood a few feet away, a small smile on his face. “It worked. Check it out,” he held up a mirror and Steve looked in it to see his own face, just as young as it normally should have been, rimmed with white hair.

“Why is my hair still white?” he asked, looking up at Tony.

“The color that the strands are grown out to be right now isn’t going to change. I’m guessing it’ll grow back in blond though,” Tony grinned and reached down to undo the straps. “I’m glad I strapped you in - otherwise I think you probably would have bent the bed in half.” Steve looked down at the bed, where the straps attached to it. It wasn’t quite bent in half, though it was bent a good deal. He looked back at Tony without saying anything and Tony laughed, “Oh shut up, Steve.”

“So what now?” Steve asked, standing and stretching once Tony had the straps off.

“Well, I’m sure you’re hungry after all that. We’ll get some food and then we’ll chat about what you want to do going forward. I know you said that when your world was in the conflict that started all this, you disagreed with your version of me - so I know I can’t expect you to stay. I’d like you to, though.” As Tony spoke, Steve looked over at him and studied him. Tony seemed honest enough, and while Steve had no illusions that part of the reason was because Steve was _Steve_ , he found that he was surprisingly okay with that.

“Okay. We’ll see,” he said, nodding. They set off towards the facility’s kitchen, where Steve had been getting food for the past day, but before they arrived they were stopped by … Bucky?

“Is that ..?” Bucky started, looking alarmed, and Tony waved a hand dismissively.

“Yes and no. Alternate dimension. You looked like you had something urgent to talk about, Colonel Barnes?”

“Right. Yeah, this might actually have to do with him, a little. There was another you spotted heading into the city. The armor is almost exactly the same, but the energy signature is slightly off,” Bucky said, turning his attention to Tony.

“Where at?” Tony asked, frowning.

“Heading this way, actually,” Bucky said, and Steve swore.

“I don’t know what’s up with him, but that’s got to be my Tony,” he said, looking between them. “How close is he?”

“He’ll get here in about ten minutes.”

“What do you think?” Tony asked him, tone curious.

Steve thought for a moment and then said, “I think you should let him come. He’s here for some kind of recon, I think, or infiltration, if he’s pretending to be you. So we let him come and intercept him when he gets here. We need to be careful, though - Pepper Potts told me his armor is fused with a symbiote now.”

“I think I can handle him,” Tony said, grinning a little. Steve wasn’t certain if that was overconfident or slightly terrifying, because if this Tony really could simply handle Stark without even barely any details as to what his powers were like then he must be very powerful. “Anyway, I have something for you.”

Steve frowned curiously, but followed Tony as he led the way to the residential quarters of the building. Near the room that Steve had been in, Tony went in and over to his closet, pulling something out. “This was with you when we found you. I stashed it in my bedroom because I didn’t want anyone else getting their hands on it,” he said, handing over Steve’s shield.

He’d completely forgotten about the shield in all of this chaos. Sam had let him use it one last time when Steve had gone to confront Stark. They’d all been about to die anyway, so what did having the shield in one place or another matter?

“Thank you. Do you have any body armor I can use? Even something light would help,” Steve asked. He wasn’t still wearing the clothes he’d worn to spar in, but what he was wearing wasn’t much tougher.

“Yeah, I do, and I think we can get you outfitted in the next ten minutes,” Tony nodded and led the way towards their armory. Steve got changed quickly, but Tony stayed out of his armor, instead only wearing what Steve recognized as an undersuit. There had to be a reason for it, but Steve didn’t bother asking. He’d find out soon enough.

Once Steve was dressed, Tony led the way up to one of the higher levels and they arrived just in time to see Stark land on the outside on a wide balcony. Stark walked inside, acting like he owned the place, and then stopped short when he saw Steve and Tony. “Well fuck this,” he snapped, raising the faceplate and glaring at them, “He told you what’s going on here, didn’t he? That this world is basically our civil war on steroids? But I get. Because he can give you something, make you young and pretty, you’ll side with him.”

“That’s not what this is,” Steve said, quietly.

“Yeah, well it sure as fuck looks like it,” Stark said, raising a hand and charging his repulsors.

From beside Steve, where Tony stood, there came a crackle of static electricity. Steve’s eyes widened and he ducked behind the shield right before a huge bolt of lightning leapt from Tony to strike Stark in the side. Stark let out a groan and went down on his knees, so Tony hit him with a bolt from the other hand. That dropped Stark all the way to the ground, but also left Tony panting.

“When were you going to mention that?!” Steve asked, looking between Tony and Stark, not sure which one he wanted to check on first. Eventually he started towards Stark, but Tony made a noise that was clearly intended to stop him.

“No, no. First we get the symbiote contained. Then we make sure the lightning didn’t fry him. And I don’t tell people about it before I use it. That’s the whole point of it,” Tony straightened up, his breathing slowly getting under control again.

 

* * *

 

 

When Tony woke up, he couldn’t feel the armor. Fucking again. He hated these fucking people.

Before he opened his eyes he took stock of his position. There were bindings on his arms and legs and he was mostly upright. So strapped into a chair. Got it. That was really nice of them. With the armor and his connections to Extremis all down there wasn’t much else he could tell without opening his eyes, so he opened them to see a relatively open room. He was sitting on a chair, and over on the other side of the room were Rogers and Stark. Stark, the smug son of a bitch, was sitting on a clear tank that contained Tony’s armor.

“Wow,” Tony said, grinning a little bit, “The gray hair really looks good on me. Tell me, did you do that intentionally to give yourself a more distinguished look, President Stark, or did it just happen? Because the eyebrows and the beard are making me think it’s intentional.”

“Shut up, Stark,” Rogers said, glaring.

“Aww, sweetie, I’m getting the last name treatment? Still? Even after you’ve seen what they’ve done to their world?” Tony asked, arching his eyebrows. “He’s been keeping his country split in half and at war for years! But you still trust him more than me?”

“You have literally been brainwashed into being evil! Not only that, but you act goddamned gleeful about it! You infected the water supply of San Francisco with Extremis! He is stuck on the opposite side of a conflict with one of the most stubborn men any of us will ever meet and they have a third party keeping the conflict alive every time they try to make peace. There’s not really a comparison,” Rogers said, giving him an extremely annoyed look.

Tony might have dropped it if not for that look, to be honest.

“Really? What about before? When I was one of a half dozen men who was trying to save the fucking universe? Trying to save _every_  fucking universe, actually,” Tony snapped, anger hot and bright and burning inside of him. He hadn’t thought he could still be that furious over this, but apparently he was wrong, “And out of the half a dozen men involved, I was the only one you wanted to beat to fucking death.”

“I never said to death,” Rogers said, frowning and shaking his head, his voice slightly more quiet.

“Oh no, you just tried to kill me when the world was ending. But long before then you came to my workshop, to my home - my haven - and said you’d beat me bloody,” Tony snapped.

“Gentlemen!” Stark said, sounding like he was about ready to repulsor both of them. “Shut the fuck up,” he looked between them for a moment, as if asking if they were going to challenge him. When neither Tony nor Rogers said anything, he continued, “We need you to get into contact with General Rogers. We know you can - there’s no way he wouldn’t have given you a way to get in touch with him again. Tell him that we want to meet with him. You need to tell him that we know that we’ve been screwed with, that we’ve all been fucked over. Someone has been keeping this war going, someone’s been playing us.”

“We got that impression, too,” Tony admitted after a moment, “But you’re going to have to give me access to my armor if I’m going to contact him. I can’t do it without it.”

Rogers and Stark exchanged glances, and eventually Rogers nodded. Stark stood and turned around to tap at the lid of the tank quickly, inputting some kind of password. It opened and Tony could feel the armor immediately. He could easily plant a small drop or two of the armor on Stark, keep tabs on him and possibly even inflict harm on him when the time was right. But as tempting as it was to fuck with Stark they had more important things to do now and if Stark was able to tell that Tony was trying to do something like that then he’d be a bit fucked.

So he just had the armor slither out of the tank, well away from Rogers or Stark, and over to him. The moment it touched him he could sense Extremis again. He reached out with it and tuned into the CB radio channel that Steve had said he’d be monitoring. So very old school. No one else used them anymore, so it was private.

 _Steve?_  He asked, while at the same time realizing that Rogers and Stark were staring at him, waiting for results.

 _Already? That was fast,_  Steve said, sounding impressed.

 _Well, I actually got my fine looking ass captured. But your President Stark and my Commander Rogers want to talk with us, want to meet up somewhere just the four of us,_  Tony explained. It occurred to him that while he had his armor now he could remove the ropes tying him down, but just as quickly he dismissed the idea. If he didn’t remove the ropes himself then they would have reason to trust him.

It took Steve a long moment to respond, and when he did, his tone was … hard to read over the radio.  _Fine. Tell Stark I want to meet at the Divide. Where Miriam was shot._

 _Will do,_  Tony was about to relay that information when Steve spoke again, surprising him.

_Don’t call them that. Mine and yours. Don’t phrase it like that. They stopped being that a long time ago, if they ever were._

Tony blinked. What? The fuck. He didn’t want to distract himself by asking for clarification, though. There was work to do.

 

* * *

 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Steve asked Tony. He had a comm in his uniform and both versions of Tony Stark were on the frequency so that they could all talk on the way to the Divide. They were almost there, since it had made the most sense to fly - both Tony Starks could cloak their armor, and Tony’s was sophisticated enough to extend the cloaking to Steve, as long as he was carrying Steve.

Which was what Steve preferred, honestly. The ache for things to be back to normal between himself and Stark had died, leaving behind a huge tangle of hurt feelings and mistrust. He figured Stark would just as soon drop him as anything.

“Yes. We need it to be just the four of us, and I’m confident that if General Rogers tries something I’ll be able to handle it,” Tony said, his head tilting sideways ever so slightly. The gesture was miniscule, and Steve knew that with the displays inside the armor Tony probably didn’t even need it, but it conveyed to Steve that Tony was eyeing Stark.

“Yeah. We can handle it,” Steve said, nodding.

“Right fucking here, asshats!” Stark snapped, putting on a burst of speed and using it to do a barrel roll around them.

Steve rolled his eyes a little, but they stayed silent for the rest of the trip.

They landed not long after and they were, unsurprisingly, there before General Rogers was. They’d let themselves in because Tony said that Miriam would want them to, since she’d been working for peace for so long, and that was a bit odd for Steve to contemplate. He’d never dealt directly with the Miriam Sharpe of his world but from what he remembered she was a somewhat unpleasant woman who had spat on and screamed at Stark when he’d gone to a memorial service for the children who had died at Stamford. As if there hadn’t been hundreds of other people there who had also lost family and friends and children in the same accident, and yet weren’t taking their grief out on the first available target. Who knows, maybe this world’s Miriam Sharpe had felt guilty for pushing the Registration Act, after seeing it tear apart the country.

Which was not a very nice thing to think, he knew, but this was not a nice world to be in.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tony asked, and Steve looked up at where Stark was opening up the fridge and cabinets and snooping around in them.

“I’m thirsty,” Stark said, sounding vaguely petulant, “And it’s not like she’s gonna need it. She’s dead.”

“This is disrespectfu- no. Fuck no.” Tony’s voice went cold at the sight of Stark pulling a six pack of beer out of the cabinet.

“Oh, you’re all uptight still, aren’t you. Come on, live a little!” Stark said, gesturing towards Tony with one of the beer bottles. Steve was over to Stark in a few strides, wrenching it out of his hands, as well as the rest of the six pack. Behind him he heard Tony move quietly into the other room.

“You aren’t drinking, Stark. You might not give a fuck about your sobriety any longer, but he still does. So I’m not going to let you drink in front of him and I’m certainly not going to let you taunt him with it like that,” Steve snarled, turning and opening the beer over the sink, pouring it out.

“For fuck’s sake! It’s just beer!” Stark threw his hands in the air and shook his head, wandering out of the kitchen.

Steve poured all of the alcohol out, every drop he found in the kitchen, and then started looking for something non-alcoholic for them to drink. As crass as he’d been about it, Stark was right - Miriam Sharpe wouldn’t be needing anything in her kitchen any longer.

“You know, people always say that if you meet your clone or doppelganger or time traveling self, there’s really only one thing to do about it,” Steve heard Stark say in the other room, and he had a bad feeling he knew where this was going.

“Fight to the death?” Tony asked, sounding very much done with Stark’s bullshit.

“Well, they also mention that, but where’s the fun there?” Stark’s voice was practically a purr, and Steve heard something else, but whatever it was sounded muffled.

Definitely time to get back into the other room.

Tony was sitting down, Stark leaning over him with his hands on Tony’s shoulders to try and keep him there. Their faces were mashed together and Stark was clearly trying to lick his way into Tony’s very firmly shut mouth, his hands flat on Stark’s chest and pushing away.

Despite the fact that Tony clearly was not a fan of the kiss, the image of the two of them kissing sent heat and arousal flooding towards Steve’s groin, and even as he strode forward to pull Stark off Tony he could feel himself getting hard.

“The two of you are no fun, you know that?” Stark said, crossing his arms. His eyes flicked downwards and he smiled. “Well. Maybe one of you is having fun.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Steve growled, shoving Stark a little. Which may not have been the most mature reaction, he had to admit, but Stark was frustrating the hell out of him.

“What the hell is going in?” A voice, very similar to Steve’s own but sounding far more worn that Steve sounded - than Steve  _hoped_  he sounded - asked, and they all turned to see General Rogers standing in the door, looking every inch his title.

“Oh great. This is going to stabilize things,” Tony muttered sarcastically. Stark went over to stand next to Rogers, and Steve was struck for a moment by how … wrong that was. That he and Stark, who were from the same universe and should be sticking together, couldn’t stand each other. That Tony and Rogers were the same way. There was a time, long ago, when he wouldn’t have believed it if he’d been told that some day he’d see not one but two examples of a set of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark unable to stand being around each other.

“You’re the one who wanted me here, Stark,” Rogers snapped, “If you’ve changed your mind, we can go.”

“No, you really can’t. You sent him to the Iron to spy on us disguised as me!” Tony said, pointing at Stark.

“Like you don’t have spies in the Blue!”

“Not with Charles fucking Xavier guarding your gates! And even if I did they wouldn’t be disguised as you!!”

“And who they’re disguised as makes it more moral?!”

“No, but according to what you just said it is moral if you send them to me because you think I have them in your ranks! So who in my ranks is a spy?”

“No one!”

“Are you sure? It’s the tactical thing to do, after all.”

“Yes, I’m sure! If I had spies there maybe Miriam Sharpe wouldn’t have been killed.”

“That wasn’t on us!”

“Like I said then, there’s only one person-”

“Bullshit! Clint is still alive and kicking, and I know guns aren’t his specialty but he can still use them. That doesn’t matter though - there’s someone else playing us both here.”

“I think it does matter. The shot was aimed at me. How am I supposed to know you aren’t just using me?”

“I’m actually inclined to agree with him,” Stark said before Tony could speak up, interrupting the heated argument. Rogers and Tony looked over at Steve and Stark as if they’d forgotten they were there entirely. “You told me about this, and remember I said then that something seemed weird. I think someone is fucking with you. Drawing this out.”

Rogers actually seemed to consider that, but he still hesitated. “The Iron needs more from us than we need from it. And what we need - resources - is the result of a blockade the Iron has inflicted on us. I still can’t know this isn’t some elaborate lie. I don’t doubt you two are genuine, but the rest of it could be something he’s organized.”

“For one, it’s not a goddamned block-” Tony started, then made a frustrated noise and sighed, starting to pace. When he stopped he looked at Steve and said, firmly, “Steve, if we’re right and there’s a third party that’s been manipulating things behind the scenes, then we are closer now to stopping this war than we ever have been since the damn thing started. I don’t know who could do that or why, but at this point if I thought it would make you fucking listen to me I would surrender and let you stick me in one of your goddamned jails with your fucking Punisher squads!”

“Am I really that arrogant and stubborn?” Steve muttered, arching his eyebrows and watching Rogers’ reaction to Tony.

“Yes,” Stark said quietly. They were standing next to each other, closer physically than they’d been without fighting in a very long time.

“What was that?” Rogers asked, rounding on Steve, raising his voice and clearly puffing himself up a little, though Steve wasn’t sure he was conscious of the movement.

“You fucking heard me. There’s no possible way you can’t have suspected there was something wrong about this whole thing, and now you have two versions of the smartest man you’ve ever known who was also your best friend for a decade telling you there’s something fishy here. Not to mention another version of yourself - and I’d like to remind you that people call us a tactical genius. All that and you still won’t listen? What would you call it if not stubborn arrogance?” Steve asked, refusing to raise his voice. “No wonder the Illuminati thought it’d be simpler to wipe my mind than try to have a rational discussion with me.”

“See, now you get it,” Stark started, but Steve didn’t let him finish.

“You’re still not forgiven,” Steve turned to him, shaking his head.

“For fucks sake! You literally just said you understood why we didn’t think we could talk to you!”

“Understanding why you reached that conclusion and forgiving you are two different things. And besides, what made me the angriest wasn’t that. It was lying to me about the universe ending. You were my best friend and you lied to me about our entire universe dying,” Steve said, trying to impress upon him the depth of that betrayal.

“They make us seem practically functional,” Tony said to Rogers, his tone teasing and fond.

“Not funny,” Rogers said, then sighed heavily, “Okay, fine. So say I believe the three of you. At least enough to go along with you. What’s the next step?”

“We tracked the shooter to Steeltown,” Tony started, but Rogers interrupted him.

“Are you suggesting we actually go to Steeltown? The four of us?” Rogers gestured between them.

“Why not?” Steve asked, getting sort of sick and tired of this asshole dragging his feet.

“We’re sort of suspicious,” Rogers snapped right back, and as he continued Steve had to admit he had a little bit of a point, “General Rogers and President Stark and their two previously unknown twin brothers taking a family vacation to Steeltown, that’s going to fly right under everyone’s radars.”

“Okay, fine. So who else do we send? You barely trust me so do you trust a single one of my people?” Tony asked.

“I would say that trusting you would be putting it a bit strongly,” Rogers admitted, “Especially if you’re right we can’t know who is behind it. And with that logic I can’t ask you to trust any of my people, or trust them myself, even.” Steve thought that was a bit odd, that Rogers would be able to immediately agree not to trust his people, but considering he had been at war for years with Tony and half of the people he’d once considered family, maybe Rogers had never really trusted anyone again.

“And you can’t just leave us behind. What if someone finds us here?” Steve said.

“Not only that, but I’m pretty sure if you leave us for too long, he’s gonna try to kill me. Again,” Stark jerked his thumb at Steve. Steve almost said that he’d only try if Stark got too obnoxious, but then thought better of it.

“Okay. Fine. As hard as it’ll be to get us all in and out, it does make the most sense,” Rogers agreed.

“We have something to do before that, though. We need to get him fixed,” Steve said, pointing at Stark.

“ _Fixed_? How about we don’t and also don’t phrase it like I’m a horny dog whose balls you’re snipping?” Stark snapped.

 

* * *

 

Tony and Stark both used Extremis to change the appearance of their armor, so that they looked like a regular grunt. Rogers wasn’t wearing any sort of special armor and the helmet covered his face when he was actually wearing it, so he was good. Steve of course looked like himself, but since he was the general of the Blue he didn’t really need to disguise himself. The only problem was hiding Rogers’ shield. Eventually they just decided to strap Rogers’ and Steve’s shields together and hope no one looked close enough to see that there were two of them. They got Steve on the comm channel that they’d been using on the way there and then headed off, flying so that things went faster.

For the most part their flight was silent, Stark or Steve occasionally course correcting but otherwise they just kept going. They’d made a sort of hesitant peace at the Divide - work together to figure out who had been fucking with Steve and Rogers, then … well, who knew what would happen then. Presumably they’d find some way to coexist peacefully.

When they arrived at Steeltown, though, it was after dark, and the guard was sheepish. He hadn’t even asked Rogers, Stark, or Tony to take off their helmets, since they were with Steve, though it made sense that that would be a normal rule, but he was sticking on another point.

“Sorry, General. Rules are rules - I can’t let you in without the check,” the guard said, and another guard on the wall of Steeltown wheeled Charles Xavier out to look at them. Damn. Tony should have paid more attention to the fucking argument. Now that he thought about it he did remember Stark bitching about Xavier guarding the gates of the cities in the Blue.

“That’s fine. But our mission in Steeltown is classified,” Steve said, giving Xavier a smile, “And I’d actually like to speak with the professor about it after he checks us.”

Xavier raised a hand to his temple and his eyebrows knitted together a little, a confused look crossing his face for a brief moment before he nodded. Tony wasn’t sure anyone who didn’t actually know Xavier, or a version of him, would have caught the expression. “Of course, General Rogers. There’s a guard room just inside the door that we can use once you come inside.”

Steve nodded and when the gate opened they headed into the city and were ushered off to the side. They were left in a conference room in a building that seemed rather military in its use. After several minutes, Charles Xavier joined them and the door shut behind him.

“All right, gentlemen, explain,” Xavier said, looking between them.

“Helmets,” Steve said, and Rogers took his helmet off. Tony and Stark both let their armor adopt its natural colors, then Tony had the armor bleed away from his face while Stark took the helmet off. “We think that someone has been playing us. Keeping the war going for their own purposes.”

Xavier nodded. “And I’ve already gathered that your friends are from another world. One of them, at least, seems trustworthy to me.”

Tony flinched slightly. Yeah, that would not be him.

“See. We need to get him fixed. Can you do it, Charles?” Rogers asked, and Tony glared at him.

“I … think so,” Xavier said slowly. “That is quite something, how he got to be the way he is. I can see it in your mind.”

Tony took a step back, intending to leave, but Stark grabbed his arm. “You know I can take you and your symbiote out if I need to. So let’s do this the easy way, okay?”

Fuck them so much. Tony almost fought, but he was outnumbered b so much it wasn’t worth it. He sighed and nodded. “Fine.”

“Good. Sit, please,” Xavier said, gesturing to one of the chairs beside the conference table. Tony sat, and Xavier got close and put his hands several inches away from Tony’s head on either side. Nothing happened for a moment - or at least nothing he could feel - and then Tony felt it. Xavier was there, in his mind, a foreign presence tearing at him and uprooting him. He screamed and bucked, but strong arms kept him pressed into the chair, not letting him escape.

It took a long time, but eventually the pain died down and Tony felt Charles extract himself from his mind. Carefully the arms that had been holding him down also moved away, and a sob tore its way out of Tony’s throat. “Oh fuck. What the hell did I do? Why the hell have you even kept me alive?! Oh my god.” Bile rose up in his throat and he tried to hold it back but before he could stop it he vomited all over the floor in front of him.

“The things you did while you were … like that were that bad?” Steve asked quietly from somewhere very near, his hand settling on the back of Tony’s neck and stroking back and forth with his thumb..

“Yeah. You have no idea,” Tony said. He shuddered and closed his eyes tight, fighting down another wave of nausea.

“There were a few good things,” Charles said, sounding like he was trying to be reassuring. “He wasn’t entirely evil. The good man that he truly is did manage to shine through at times.”

Rogers made a small disbelieving noise, and Tony went even more tense than he had been a moment before. Of course Rogers didn’t believe that he’d had any good left in him. He probably didn’t believe that Tony was a good man now. Just not … entirely evil.

“When are you going to be ready to go?” Rogers asked, tone curt. Stark glanced over at him, and Tony felt a sense of smug satisfaction that he wasn’t the only one who wanted to know what crawled up inside Rogers’ ass and died.

“Now,” Tony wiped a hand across his mouth and stood. “I’m ready now if you are.”

“Good. Now, where did you say you’d tracked the shooter to?” Steve said, dropping his hand down to his side and looking at Stark.

“Well, Storm destroyed my drone so I don’t have anything more exact than somewhere in Steeltown, but we can start looking. I have a signal we can follow,” Stark nodded his head towards the door and they started to leave but Steve stopped them.

“Wait,” he turned to Charles, “Is there a uniform here anywhere that I can borrow? Something to make me look a bit less … General Rogers?”

“We do, as a matter of fact. And I have something you can hide those shields in, as well,” Charles smiled and led the way deeper into the building.

Twenty minutes later they left, Steve wearing a city guard uniform and Rogers’ jacket swapped out for something a bit more Blue than Iron. Both of them carried a large duffel bag stuffed with their shield and some clothes to soften the appearance, make it less obvious that each bag contained a glorified vibranium Frisbee.

They headed into the city and Stark shared the signal data with Tony so that both of them had it in their versions of Extremis. Hopefully they wouldn’t get split up, but if they did then they would try to at least have one Steve Rogers stick with one Tony Stark so that they were relatively evenly split as far as powers and abilities went.

“That building there,” Stark said eventually, coming to a stop across the street from where the signal stopped at.

“Several floors up, too. How do we want to do this? Outside or inside?” Tony asked, glancing up and down the building, trying to look casual.

“Inside is less suspicious. But if we do both we can surround him,” Steve said.

“The adjustments you can make to the appearance of the armor,” Rogers asked, looking between Tony and Stark, “Can you appear invisible? Or close enough to it?”

“I can,” Stark nodded.

“Close enough, anyway,” Tony shrugged.

So because Tony and Stark could both have their armor cloak to invisibility or near invisibility, they were to go in through the window while Rogers and Steve breached the door. That meant Stark and Tony were wearing their full armor for this, and to be on the safe side Tony was paying attention to very nearly every sensor he had.

That was how they figured the whole thing out.

The moment Tony got into the room and saw the occupant he flinched backwards. The others clearly saw Bullseye - even as they were subduing him Steve was snapping at Stark about how he’d been right about who the shooter had been - but Tony didn’t. Tony, thanks to the built in Skrull detector in his armor, saw a motherfucking Skrull.

“That’s not Bullseye,” Tony said firmly.

“What are you talking about. Of course it is,” Rogers said, frowning and looking between Tony and the Skrull.

“I have a Skrull detector built into my HUD. It’s not Bullseye,” Tony explained, and immediately Stark went tense and Steve went still.

“There has to be more than one,” Stark said quickly, “this much mayhem for this long, it has to be a long game. There have to be a lot of them.”

“Oh fuck,” Tony looked at Rogers and then back to Stark and Steve, then back to Rogers. “I didn’t think of it sooner because I don’t remember it first hand because of the mind wipe and you were dead at the time, but they didn’t have the Skrull invasion here!”

“Do you think Veranke is here somewhere?” Rogers asked, glancing around as if she were going to pop out from behind a couch.

“Somewhere, yeah!” Tony nodded.

“We need to regroup. Call everyone together and call a truce, then figure out how to find the Skrulls and throw them in jail,” Steve said, sighing.

“We’re already in Steeltown, so we may as well start things off in Liberation,” Stark said.

“Really?” Steve sounded surprised, but Tony wasn’t sure why - it made more sense and it was a good gesture of trust.

Stark nodded. “Really.”

 

* * *

 

Steve wasn’t sure how this had happened.

Well, part of it was clear. Things had been going fine, the four of them escorting Bullseye back to Liberation, and then they’d noticed that they were being followed. So they’d split off, Rogers grabbing Bullseye and heading in one direction, going the long way around, and Steve following the much more straightforward path to Liberation.

What he didn’t understand was how the hell he’d ended up with Stark, not Tony.

He realized the irony in that thought, of course. Normally Stark would be his first pick to partner up with. But not any more. Even now that his personality was no longer inverted on its axis, Steve still couldn’t trust him. Stark had just been lying to him for far too long.

“I don’t like this any more than you do,” Stark said after a while, glancing over at him. They were pressed against each other, Stark holding him as they flew towards Liberation. Rogers apparently had some kind of jet pack, which is why it made sense for he and Tony to take Bullseye - more propulsion to carry the heavier weight.

“Oh, I think I’m definitely the one less pleased with this situation.” Steve said, shaking his head.

“Okay, fine! You’re righteous and offended. Have you noticed we’re being tailed?” Stark asked.

Steve glanced over Stark’s shoulder and frowned. “I don’t see anything.”

“They’re in the cloud cover. They drop down every so often. Two of them. They’re Skrulls, but … that Punisher force the others kept talking about? I think these two are on it,” Stark said, voice distant, the way it was when he was thinking. “Hey, if I throw you at one of them, do you think you can take his jet pack off and put it on before you drop too far out of the sky?”

“What?! What the hell kind of a plan is that?!” Steve turned wide eyes on Stark, who had a wide grin on his face. He schooled his face into a more serious expression at Steve’s doubt, though. The armor’s helmet was configured so that Steve could actually see his face, though he could tell that Stark was getting the Extremis feeds directly into his mind. His eyes got a distant look to them every so often as he read the data.

“They’re catching up. You’re not properly protected for flying too much faster at this or any altitude. We’re going to end up fighting them. I can’t fight well with one hand. Not with … not with us as out of sync as we will be. So we need to think of something else,” Stark explained.

“Fine. But make sure I hit the guy, okay?” Steve nodded and shifted his grip on the duffel in his arms. Clinging to Stark like he was, he couldn’t pull the shield out but he could at least make sure it was an effective weapon.

“Definitely. And if you do take out your guy, you go - don’t wait for me, okay? I’ll be fine and I’ll catch up with you at Liberation,” Stark insisted. Steve hesitated a long moment. Everything in him said you didn’t leave a man behind. But then he nodded, and tried to ignore the pained look on Stark’s face right before the armor slid around to cover his face completely, the silver metal beading up almost like mercury as it moved. It unnerved him.

They waited a few minutes, then Stark’s hand tightened on Steve’s waist, signaling that he was about to move. He changed directions suddenly, the g-forces it pulled making Steve’s vision go gray a moment, and used an Immelmann turn to go back towards the Skrulls. Despite the cloud cover, Stark knew exactly where to go and Steve slammed right into a Skrull a fraction of a second after he felt Stark let go of him. Of course, the Skrull didn’t look like a Skrull, but he would take that on faith at least.

He bashed the Skrull in the face with the duffle bag hard enough that he heard the shield clank against the Skrull’s helmet, wrapping his legs around the Skrull’s waist and fiddling with the harness of the jet pack with his other hand. Off to the side he heard and felt blasts going off, the whine of repulsors and the heat and chill of some kind of fire and ice powers. Or maybe the heat came from the repulsors. Either way, he trusted that Stark had his own fight well in hand.

As he and the Skrull struggled, they lost altitude quickly, wind whistling past their ears. The Skrull was screaming something at him, but the words were lost immediately. He concentrated on what he had to do, refusing to look down. Steve knocked the Skrull’s hands away from his weapons and the controls of the jet pack while at the same time trying to wrestle it off of him. It was frantic and he felt like he’d never get it done, but finally the pack was off of the Skrull and he grabbed it and kicked hard away from the Skrull as he put it on and activated it.

Not long after he began to climb again, around five or six seconds, he heard a sickening, wet crunch and looked down to see the Skrull against the ground, dead. They could sprout wings as a rudimentary form of shape shifting, he knew, but it had probably been far too fast for the Skrull to do so or to get any altitude.

Steve briefly considered going back to help Stark, but he decided against it. Stark had specifically asked him to keep going and meet up with the others at Liberation, so that’s what he would do. But the look that had been on Stark’s face when Steve had agreed to that haunted him the entire flight back.

 

* * *

 

Tony groaned as he regained consciousness. He seemed to wake up in strange places in this world a lot. And away from his fucking armor - he couldn’t sense it through Extremis. Again. This time he was chained up, his arms over his head. His arms weren’t aching or anything yet, so it must have been a recent change in position.

“Good, you’re awake,” a voice said, and he opened his eyes to see the same Skrull he’d been fighting before. It was still in disguise, probably to take advantage of the powers of whoever it was he was imitating. The Skrull appeared to be made of half ice and half fire, the ice and fire constantly shifting over his body.

It was really strange to be chained up the way he was, he noted - the room he was in seemed very modern aside from the chains, one wall made of glass and the others sleek metal. There was a drain in the middle of the floor but no other fixtures or furniture of any kind.

“Let me guess, you’re going to say something stereotypical, we’re going to trade insults, you’ll tell me your whole plan, then you’ll kill me?” Tony said, arching his eyebrows. He’d drawn his fight out with the Skrull to give Rogers time to get away, but apparently that had been a really bad idea.

“No. This is when you tell me what you and the other Stark and the two Rogers know about the Skrulls,” his captor said and Tony felt fear coil in his stomach. So it was going to be like that. Awesome.

“Let’s see. From Hala, tend to be blue? No, wait, that’s the Kree,” Tony said, frowning and pretending he was confused. If he was going to be willfully disobedient he may as well go all out. “Pointy ears and inclined eyebrows with green blood? No that’s a Vulcan. Now I’m on fictional aliens, that’s getting more wrong - ahhh fuck!!” Tony’s taunting ended in a scream as the Skrull punched him in the stomach with a fire engulfed hand.

“I can make this easy on you, Stark,” the Skrull said, gently stroking the burned spot with the other hand, now covered in ice. Tony bucked and writhed, the sudden temperature dip feeling like a burn, too.

“Fuck off,” he said when he got his breath back.

The Skrull shrugged. “Very well. Just know later that you chose this.”

 

* * *

 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Rogers snapped, and Tony literally had to hold him back as he lunged towards Steve.

“He told me to go on without him! He said he could handle it and I trusted his judgment!” Steve kept Tony and the conference table between himself and Rogers, watching him warily. “Besides, it’s not like I’d be much use in an aerial fight.”

“How the hell are you that stupid?! Do you realize there’s every chance he didn’t fight as hard as he could have so that you could get away?” Rogers said, yanking away from Stark and glaring at Steve. He turned away before Steve could answer and left the room, slamming the door shut hard enough to make the frame rattle.

“He wouldn’t. Would he?” Steve asked Tony, frowning a little.

“Yes, Steve, he would. I don’t even know everything that went down between the two of you and I know that much. He wants to make up for the things he’s done wrong,” Tony said. He went over to Steve and put a hand on his arm, watching him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. I just wish I had gone back to help,” Steve sighed and nodded towards the door, “Where do you think he went?”

“The Bullseye Skrull is in a cell nearby. So far interrogating him hasn’t worked, but I think you just managed to rile him up enough that it will now.” Tony gave Steve a little half smile and Steve frowned. Did Tony mean that Rogers was going to torture information out of the Skrull? Tony looked away and said quietly, “Don’t give me that look. I don’t approve of it, but this sort of thing happens on both sides now. Huge portions of the country have been destroyed in the past few years and what’s left was divided in half. People are at the end of their rope. Something had to give, and it turned out our morals gave pretty easily.”

“They can’t have been all that important to start with if they gave that fast,” Steve kept watching Tony, finding himself unable to look away.

Tony shrugged. “Not all of them gave. Just … the things that were in the way of protecting our people. So I’m probably a lot more like your Tony than you’re comfortable with, but I imagine the General is, too.”

Steve nodded and didn’t say anything. Staying who you were in the face of difficult choices like that was when it became the most important. But maybe he would be different in the face of six years of constant war.

They got food and rested while Rogers … took care of things. Rogers had apparently told his people about the situation and some of them accepted it and got to work, but others were uneasy. Tony had gotten to a terminal and was using it to contact the Iron, Steve standing nearby and watching for want of anything else to do, when he realized that Peter Parker had been glaring viciously at Tony every time they were in the same space.

“What’s his problem?” Steve asked quietly.

“MY and their daughter are in the Iron. She picked it because she thought it would be better to raise a child there. Peter decided he’d rather be here,” Tony explained. Steve nodded. That would do it. After a moment Tony said, “Okay, Barnes and Walters have everything set up on my end. All we need is word from the General where the Skrull force is and they can deploy.”

It took another twenty minutes before Rogers came out, putting a fresh uniform on. “The Divide. They’ve been in the Divide this entire time. And you were right,” he nodded to Steve, “Veranke is here. She’s been behind the whole thing, playing puppet master and keeping us dancing to her tune. Ever since the Negative Zone prison.”

“Damn it,” Tony growled, “We’re so blind. We should have known then that neither one of us were capable of that.”

“What do we do about it?” Steve asked. This was good information, but the Skrulls could become anyone. Even if they did fight them the Skrulls could just change and join their armies.

“I have a weapon,” Rogers started, slowly and carefully, “It’s designed to remove people’s secondary abilities. If someone has a mutation or power that isn’t tech based, it’s gone if they’re within range of this bomb when it goes off. It’ll force the Skrulls into their natural forms and make them stay that way.”

“You’re so against registration - against forcing people to do something - that you’ll split your country in half but you’re fine with forcibly removing the very parts of them that you’re fighting over?!” Steve asked, outraged.

“We weren’t going to deploy it if we didn’t have to. If the peace talks had worked it never would have gotten off the ground,” Rogers’ voice went hard, uncompromising.

“That doesn’t make it okay! You know what, you and the Tony Stark from my world deserve each other. I can’t even imagine being in a place where I would think that designing a weapon like that would be okay, and you go design that and he and the Illuminati design planet killing weapons - you’re all sickening,” Steve knew that getting worked up like this wasn’t productive, but he couldn’t help it.

“I find myself partly horrified you planned on using that on the people in the Iron and partly impressed you came up with it,” Tony said, his tone much more calm than either Steve Rogers had kept theirs. “Do you have a deployment system?”

“Not really. We were pretty much going to hand deliver it,” Rogers shook his head.

“I’ll have Barnes and Walters send a drone this way. We can use that to put the bomb down in the Divide. We’ll detonate it remotely and have the armies move in once the Skrulls are stuck like that,” Tony glanced between Rogers and Steve, “Okay?”

Steve nodded but Rogers shook his head, “What about the other Tony?”

“We can’t stop everything to find him now. Once it’s over we will. He was taken by a Skrull masquerading as a Punisher, so wherever the Punishers normally spend their time, that’s where we’ll probably find him.” Steve said. Rogers shot him a glare, but didn’t disagree.

They got a group of people together to finish up the bomb and prepare it to attach to the drone while everyone else began to head to the Divide. The range on the bomb’s explosive force wasn’t very wide, but the range on the bomb’s ability to remove powers was about two miles. The plan was to keep both armies at least five miles away from the Divide when the bomb was dropped, then move them in. The drone had arrived by the time they had gotten the bomb ready to attach to it, so they attached it and set the plan into motion.

The march to the Divide was long and tense, the Blue soldiers occasionally giving Steve and Tony very confused looks. They’d been told what was going on, of course, but that didn’t stop it from being a very weird situation.

“It’s there,” Tony said, long before they got to the five mile point, tapping into the drone’s cameras with Extremis. “And it’s dropping into the Divide, getting low … there we go, bomb dropped.” Rogers nodded and pressed the detonator. The ground shook, murmurs erupting amongst their troops.

“Calm down, everyone! That was the plan!!” Rogers called out, “We have a common enemy in the Skrull. Someone who has been actively turning us against each other and ripping our families apart. It’s about time we showed them that the Iron and the Blue are stronger together than we are apart. That we can unite against a common threat and come out stronger than ever before!” The soldiers cheered and they continued onwards. There was some hesitance when they saw the army from the Iron in the distance once they got close enough to the Divide, but another reminder that they were all working for the same common goal helped to spur them onwards.

There Skrull warriors pouring out of the Divide when they got there. Rogers let out a short breath beside him and Steve couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t actually believed that the Skrull would be there, or would be there in the numbers they’d been fearing, until he saw them himself.

In the end it was almost anti-climactic. There were lots of Skrulls, but the two armies outnumbered them almost ten to one, and the fight was over in a few hours. Steve, Rogers, and Tony all waded into the thick of things with the same goal - finding Veranke. They didn’t, not directly, but she was hand delivered to them by a wrathful Azari.

“Her people destroyed the Negative Zone prison, disguised as my father,” he spat out, shoving her at Rogers. “You will see that she’s punished for her crimes?”

“Of course, Azari. They all will be,” Rogers promised. Veranke looked furious, but remained silent. All around them Skrull warriors were either being defeated or killed. She was absolutely outmatched. There were a few casualties on both the Iron and the Blue sides, but it was nothing compared to the utter devastation that would have happened if Veranke had gotten her way and they’d fought each other instead.

“I’m going to take my people back to the Iron, but I’ll be sending someone across with Skrull detectors soon,” Tony said, “I’m sure Veranke has agents on both sides so equipping as many people as possible with detectors will be necessary.”

“Good. We need to keep in better touch with each other, as well. Make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Rogers nodded and turned to Steve. “Are you going with him?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Steve glanced at Tony, who smiled encouragingly at him. “I want to but I also think having one of each of us on each side is a good idea. It will help people unify.”

“There’s a thought,” Tony’s smile widened and he looked around at the remnants of the battle.

“What?” Steve asked, not able to follow that particular logical jump.

“Unity City. Or maybe just Unity. Right here,” Tony pointed at the Divide. “And maybe once we get everything worked out we can bring the Iron and the Blue back together.”

“I’m not so sure about _that_. But I like the idea of a city with joint citizenship, where people are free to cross from one to the other,” Rogers nodded. “For now, though, I need to get Veranke into a prisoner transport and figure out where the hell the other Tony Stark is.”

“We’ll be in contact soon,” Tony promised, nodding.

 

* * *

 

“So, how is Bucky doing?” Tony asked, sitting at one of the tables in the tents that the construction crew at Unity City normally used for food, but they had commandeered for a political meeting. Over about ten feet away Steve and Stark were having a civil, if lively, discussion about the actual politics that had been the purpose of this trip.

Rogers shook his head. “He turned out to be a Skrull. I know the Bucky in our home universe wasn’t a Skrull, not ever, so at some point Veranke swapped them out. When you tell your Steve that, make sure he knows that, that in our world Bucky did actually survive to be happy for a while.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, of course.” They’d long since figured out that everyone that they’d known in their world before Civil War did exist in this world, too. But so many of those people from this world had died. Some of them for a very long time, some of them for only a few months. It was hard to imagine. And then when he remembered that everyone from their own universe was dead, it was very nearly overwhelming.

“You alright?” Rogers asked, frowning. Oddly, spending time with Stark had actually increased Rogers’ empathy for Tony. Maybe it was because they were basically the same person, maybe it was because it had finally been long enough that Rogers was willing to listen to Tony. Or maybe it was because Rogers had seen what war had pushed Steve to do and build and had realized that he wasn’t as squeaky clean as he’d always thought.

“I’m fine, yes,” Tony waved him off. He hadn’t slept well the night before, so talking about the Skrulls was stressing him out a little more than usual.

Months ago, once Veranke and the Skrull army had been taken care of, it had still taken Steve a few days to find him. By that time Tony had been in horrifyingly bad condition. Extremis was the only reason he was still alive, and even then it had taken a long time to heal all of the physical damage and it could do nothing for the emotional and psychological damage. So Tony suffered nightmares very regularly, and had a difficult time when the topics of the Skrulls, death, or the Incursions, his came up. It wasn’t like he couldn’t talk about those things, it just grated on his nerves far more than it normally would have.

“How are you and your General getting along?” Rogers asked after a moment, looking hesitant.

“Very well,” Tony smiled, glancing over at where Steve and Stark were discussing things and then looking back at Rogers. “And the two of you?”

“Good. You know, I still don’t think I’d ever chose Registration but I think I’m starting to see some of the things you said were genuinely good about it, and not just the ‘better of two evils’ parts,” Rogers said. “It helps that there are heroes running it, heroes in control of how it’s implemented.”

Tony couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh my god, we’ll make a politician out of one of you yet!”

“Very funny,” Rogers said, but he was smiling a little. God, it had been a while since Tony had seen that smile on that face and directed at him. Steve didn’t smile all that much either, not out of genuine happiness. More and more lately, but it was still rare.

They continued to chat and catch up for a while and eventually Rogers said, “You know, I was angry at you at first for bringing us here. Now I’m sort of glad. We helped them. Who knows what would have happened if we weren’t here. And I think we’re both pretty happy and settled where we’re at.”

Tony nodded. He’d thought a lot about that, actually, how it had worked out that Rogers and Stark had fallen in together and he and Steve had. He wasn’t sure if it was because they were all trying to find happiness with a version of the man they loved who could actually stand to be in the same room with them for more than five minutes or if they had all managed to actually see the men they were with and not just that he was a reflection of the one from their own universe. Either way, though, Tony felt like he and Steve somehow had a deeper understanding of each other than he and Rogers had enjoyed in years, and he was sure Stark and Rogers felt the same way.

“I’m glad it worked out, too,” Tony nodded.

“Food break!” Stark called from the other table, standing and stretching, making a satisfied noise after a moment. Tony and Rogers stood, too, and Tony went over to Steve.

“How are the negotiations going?” he asked quietly.

“It’s working out, actually. I heard that comment about making a politician out of one of us - I’ll have you know I’ve been taking what you told me to heart and making compromises,” Steve said, giving Tony a little half smile.

Tony leaned in and quickly kissed his cheek.” I’m proud of you. You’re so stubborn, that must have been difficult.”

“It’s for the good of the people,” Steve said with a shrug. “That’s the important thing, and it’s what we lost sight of before.”

Grinning, Tony looped his arm through Steve’s and walked with him over to where the food was. As far as they knew he and Rogers were the only two survivors of a destroyed universe and they’d been dumped into the middle of a years long war between superheroes in a country that was literally divided in half. But somehow he was happier now than he’d been in years.

 

**Author's Note:**

> To start off with, if you are here for the content warnings: If you're not fond of selfcest - it's only flirting and kissing. The kiss is not reciprocated or wanted, and the one Tony is doing it to the other mostly to freak him out - though that may not be clear. The torture is not particularly graphic, though it is heavily implied against a Skrull and you see it started against Tony.
> 
> A note about timing - I know several of the Battleworlds books use eight years as the time Battleworlds has existed, but the Civil War book says six years several times so that's what I went with. The mainline 616 timing I basically just made up because their timeline telescopes and you can never know how many years have passed anyway.
> 
> I read so many comics to do research for this.  
> [Axis whole run](http://marvel.com/comics/series/18904/avengers_x-men_axis_2014)  
> [Superior Iron Man, whole run](http://marvel.com/comics/series/19164/superior_iron_man_2014_-_present)  
> [Avengers, volume 5, #29 through 44 Primarily 44, for the fight between Steve and Tony, and 29 for the earlier fight between Steve and Tony](http://marvel.com/comics/series/16452/avengers_2012_-_present)  
> [New Avengers, volume 3, #18 through ... my notes go through 28 but I think I read through 33](http://marvel.com/comics/series/16451/new_avengers_2013_-_present)  
> [Secret Wars, 2015-2016 issue 1, basically just to see how the world ends](http://marvel.com/comics/series/19648/secret_wars_2015_-_present)  
> [Captain America, vol 7, issues 17-25, basically to get the “how Steve got old” story](http://marvel.com/comics/series/16516/captain_america_2012_-_present)  
> [Captain America Volume 5 Issues 22-30 for his part in Civil War](http://marvel.com/comics/series/832/captain_america_2004_-_2011)  
> [Iron Man Volume 4 Issues 1- 14 for Civil War but also for Extremis and Execute Program](http://marvel.com/comics/series/835/iron_man_2004_-_2007)  
> [Casualties of War](http://marvel.com/comics/series/1144/iron_mancaptain_america_casualties_of_war_2006)  
> [The Confession](http://marvel.com/comics/series/3904/civil_war_the_confession_2007)  
> [Civil War whole run](http://marvel.com/comics/series/1067/civil_war_2006_-_2007)  
> [What if? Civil War](http://marvel.com/comics/series/3914/what_if_civil_war_2007)  
> [What If Fallen Son?](http://marvel.com/comics/issue/22965/what_if_2008_1)  
> [Secret War Civil War whole run (I know that's not technically the name but that's what I call it)](http://marvel.com/comics/series/19350/civil_war_2015_-_present)  
> [Avengers Prime](http://marvel.com/comics/series/13085/avengers_prime_2010_-_2011)
> 
> I used the name of two aerial maneuvers in the fic and about the only thing I knew about them going in [is that what most people think of as a barrel roll isn't](http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/01/26/difference-between-barrel-rolls-and-aileron-rolls/). So if my wiki research has given me the wrong name or the wrong idea of what is best to use in a particular situation or the wrong idea of what the maneuvers look like, I apologize to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. The research I did is here: [Aerial maneuvers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_fighter_maneuvers), [barrel rolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_roll),[ Immelmann turn.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immelmann_turn)
> 
> The unnamed Skrull Punisher guy[was a character who actually was swapped with the Skrulls during the invasion](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Terrance_Sorenson_\(Earth-616\)) but is also someone I'd never heard of and who has neat powers.


End file.
